At Her Leisure

It's been a low-key sewing week. We've been working on some trim in the house, which has left little time for sewing but came out well. I've been working a little on a 1780's chemise dress, the kind with a fitted back and sleeves but a gathered front and skirt rather than the earlier giant tube with sleeves. The bodice except the full-length front panel and the sleeves are finished. I still have the whole skirt to do. My cotton voile is in two pieces, but I think I might be able to get the whole thing out of one of the pieces, which would be nice. We shall see. The next step is to get a box of costumes down off the shelf to measure how long the skirt panels need to be.

I've worked a little on the flamestitch pocketbook too, and the three center rows are finished. I moved the frame last night. I'm afraid I'll have to do the last bit on the ends in the hand instead of in the frame because I didn't buy much extra fabric and it seems like it will be a bit stiff to put in a hoop. We shall see about that one too.

Now that the Christmas ornaments are finished, I started one of those 18th century pocketbooks. It's one that's patterned in Fitting and Proper. The museum page is here: https://mycchc.catalogaccess.com/objects/29491. It's using the leftover wools from my embroidered 1805 dress from a couple of years ago with the addition of blues, browns, and black. I just bought the small skeins this time. It's done on petit point canvas, though it gives me a slightly larger gauge than the original (22ct for me, 25ct for the original). I had to double the 2-ply crewel wools to get good coverage so if I wanted to do more flamestitch/Bargello/Irish stitch in the future, I would probably plan for 4-ply wools. On the other hand, the leftovers may be more useful as 2-ply so maybe not.

I've mostly been working on the 1897 evening dress, but in between times I've made some nice progress.


The whole thing is eleven rows of four motifs. It's physically harder to do than cross-stitch because the wools are thicker than the cotton embroidery threads, but it's mentally easier because it's a single repeated motif with the same fill pattern in different colors.

I finished the kids' Christmas ornaments early this year. These are the second half of the "Christmas Village Ornaments" kit. Once again I left off the cording so these would match the first three from 2023.

I’m really glad I made the new garters as soon as I gave my old ones away because I ended up wearing them to the DFWCG tea today. I wore Regency and didn’t even think about the garters until I was pulling them out. I really do take having the underwear I need for granted.

I nearly finished the bodice of my 1897 evening dress last weekend. I just have to make up and set the sleeves in it. I washed the lace for the sleeves during the week so I'd like to get those in this weekend.

I started the beading on the skirt and am about a third of the way through the first side. The beading can be a bit hard on the back because I spread it out on a table and end up rather hunched over it. If I thought I were going to take up beading intensively, I'd definitely have to come up with a better solution. For a couple weeks worth of time on one dress, it's not worth it. I'll just try to alternate days of beading with days of doing other sewing.

The goal for the weekend is to finish beading the pieces for the bodice of the 1897 dress. I made good progress on it yesterday after doing nothing on it Friday. Finishing today seems reasonable.

In case someone needs to knit a penguin: https://archive.org/details/krl00648091/mode/2up

The DFWCG Sporting Sunday event was held on Sunday, and I wore my 1918 sateen dress again. This year instead of the 1920 tuxedo sweater, I wore the 1919 cape sweater with vest front over it. I didn't wear the cape sweater for long because it was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit out, but I got pictures and enjoyed wearing it while I did.





The wool is very nice, and it's fluffy and cushiony. I did find I need to tack the belt to the vest front because every time I lifted my arms, it pulled out from under the belt, and I'd have to tuck it back in.

Here's the Ravelry page: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/MCBurbage/1919-cape-sweater.

There were seven of us at the event, ranging from 1870's to 1970's. Two of us were in 1910's. One wore a 1920's bathing suit. We played horseshoes with complete disregard for the rules and a singular lack of competitive spirit and then played Bocce ball in a similar way. I took my croquet set but didn't end up setting it up.

I needed more slips so I bought some silk charmeuse when it was on sale last year. In January I sat down one day and cut out two slips from a 1940's pattern I have and then realized that there was also a pattern for tap pants in there so I cut a pair of those too. Then I remembered that I wanted to make the Wearing History 1930's low-backed bra so I cut that out too. It took me a few weeks to work through it all, but I finished all the pieces probably in March.



There are two slips, but I only took a picture of one since they're identical. I still have a couple of yards left, but that was enough wiggly silk for awhile.

I am not sure the bra came out quite right. I scaled it down from 38" to 36", but it still seems like the edges come way closer together in the back than the pattern image shows. It is possible that I'll have to adjust whenever I get around to making the 1930's evening dress I want. That will be awhile because I don't have the fabric for it yet.

I thought I had everything I needed to make a new 1890's corset back in January so I mocked up and started working on the 1890's corset with elastic panels from Norah Waugh's Corsets and Crinolines. I don't think I really made any changes to the pattern. I had to order a busk and some boning tape, but other than that, it was all from my existing supplies.

The pictures are not great. I put it on really quickly and didn't make sure that the lacing gap was even before I took the pictures. I need to unlace the corset and knot the strings at the bottom of the bust so they don't pull too tight there, which is something I nearly always need to do. I also found that you have to be a bit careful about how you pull the bottom part of the lace because the elastic will be happy to stretch and make the gap really narrow at the bottom. I will be curious to see if after wearing it for hours the laces will want to work their way tighter at the bottom and a little looser at the waist. Of course, the top part of the lace will presumably keep it from doing that too badly.

It's coutil with a mix of steel and synthetic whalebone. I've got a bunch of steel bones in a box, but lately I've been using synthetic whalebone for practically everything so I thought I should use up some of the steel bones. I used steel for every channel I had a good size for and filled in the rest with plastic.